Efficient management of projects in a company or other organization is an increasing problem as the number and complexity of projects increases. An individual project may for example be directed to development of a product for sale by a company and involve a large number e.g. >100 activities, herein called processes. It is therefore desirable that some system or method be used to monitor, regulate, control, and coordinate the various processes in a beneficial manner. The overall objective may be to accelerate a product development schedule or maximize efficiency of resource utilization, minimize development cost, resulting product cost or any other defined criteria.
Ladd, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,864,480 describes a system, method, and computer programs for assisting a user through the process of developing an electronic product and/or documentation. The system uses a computer with a monitor and memory. Stored in the memory is an electronic representation of a product to be developed and a process for the development of the product. The electronic representation of the process includes a process lifecycle tree divided into phase realization subtrees. Each subtree has elements such as a document, a deliverable, a milestone, a decision point, or a schedule. The user interacts with the tree and subtrees using programs executed on a computer to control product development.
Song and Montoya-Weiss in their paper entitled “Critical Development Activities for Really New Versus Incremental Products,” published in the Journal of Prod. Innov. Manag., vol. 15, no. 2, March 1998, p. 124-135 describe product development activities for both new and incremental products. They describe a model linking new product profitability to the proficiency level of activities (processes). The model suggests when and on what processes, project management should concentrate resources to achieve higher levels of success.
A project may be directed to production of products or providing services rather than product development. Morgan et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,799,286 describe an automated activity-based method and system for managing a business organization. A user at a computer workstation enters activity information. The system automatically downloads and stores accounting information associated with the activities in a relational database along with the activity information. A database server maps expenses to the various activities and may generate reports to use in managing the project.
Ackroff et al in U.S. Pat. No. 5,721,913 describe a system and method for managing the workflow of activities in a business organization. The system is computer-based and includes an information database of data records for independent activities. Data objects are linked dependent upon the type of activity to be managed, and data records contain attribute information for the linked data objects. Activities are then controlled by controlling processing of the attribute information within each data record.
Various tools herein called technical methods have been developed for implementing a solution once the desired processes and relationships are known. Microsoft Project 2000 available from the Microsoft Corp. Redmond Wash. and PM Office available from Systemcorp®, Systemcorp is a registered trademark of Systemcorp, Inc. of Montreal Canada, are examples of such tools.
All of the aforementioned methods and tools have limitations for general use because the important steps of process definition and relationship definition are not addressed. It would therefore be a desirable goal to provide an improved project management method and system capable of handling these important parts of project management, and be capable of employment across a much broader range of project types. It is believed that such a method and system would constitute a significant advancement in the art.